CUTTINGS

CUTTINGS; Lilacs Leave Behind Their Mundane Past

By SUZY BALES

Published: May 23, 2004

DANIEL K. RYNIEC, curator of lilacs at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, says that lilacs are constantly cycling in and out of fashion.

John E. Elsley, a renowned plantsman and the director of horticulture at Klehm's Song Sparrow Perennial Farm, says that part of the reason is that the common European lilac, Syringa vulgaris, which came over with the Pilgrims, is both unbecomingly prolific and often cursed with mildew by the end of the summer.

Think ''lilac,'' and many people recall an unkempt, rangy shrub growing smack against grandma's house; the only way she could gather the blossoms was to lean out a second-story window. And with new bushes so easy to grow from suckers, there seemed no reason ever to buy one.

But lilacs today are notably different. With an increasing number of cultivars available in catalogs and nurseries, Mr. Ryniec is ready to declare them back in fashion. New compact bushes naturally grow in pleasing shapes under five feet tall. Colors include white, yellow, blue, purple, violet, pink, magenta, red and a bicolor, Sensation, that comes with each purple petal edged in white. In many cultivars, colorful fall foliage and winter bark are added attractions. And the new cultivars resist mildew.

But it has taken a long time to bring the new cultivars to market. Mr. Elsley said that lots of good plants, like the late-blooming lilac tree Syringa reticulata subsp. pekinensis China Snow, somehow got sidelined. In 1926, Joseph Rock sent seed from China to the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Ill. The seed easily grew into a small tree, admired for its fragrant snowy panicles in midsummer, spotless foliage and shiny amber bark. Yet it has only recently been propagated; Mr. Elsley now sells it.

Normally, though, he favors cultivars bred for American gardens by the Rev. John L. Fiala (1924-1990), a Catholic priest and passionate lilac breeder in Ohio. For small spaces and foundation plantings, Mr. Elsley prefers S. oblata var. dilatata Betsy Ross and S. v. Little Boy Blue. Both stay dwarf, growing 5 to 6 feet tall and wide in 10 years. Betsy Ross's white blooms glisten in late April, and its foliage crisps to a purple-red in the fall. Little Boy Blue's reddish buds blossom into sky-blue single flowers in May. Even smaller, S. patula Karen's pale pink blooms bleach white on a rounded four-foot shrub.

For large spaces, Father Fiala bred two curiosities. S. tomentella Kum-Bum sprouts golden leaves in the spring that halo its purple blooms. (The leaves green up in summer.) For the art lover, there is nature's Jackson Pollock, the Aucubaefolia, with leaves that are irregularly splashed and speckled with gold, yellow and chartreuse. This sport of the famous President Grevy lilac bears large, double lilac-blue blossoms.

John Anderson III, a propagator at the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard, lists 10 favorite unusual lilacs on the arboretum's web site, www.arboretum.harvard.edu, so ''adventurous gardeners have the opportunity to break with tradition,'' he said. Two of his favorites are already popular: the Korean dwarf lilac S. patula Miss Kim and the dwarf little-leaf lilac S. meyeri Palibin. Miss Kim is known for mildew-proof leaves and fragrant lavender flowers that bloom later and longer than the common lilac. Palibin, a dark pink bloomer, is naturally a slow-growing dwarf, easily kept at a rounded three feet without much pruning. Both fit nicely into a flower border, foundation planting or a low-growing hedge.

I for one can't get enough of the lilac's pervasive perfume. I asked Mr. Ryniec, since he oversees 150 lilacs including 18 of the 23 different species, how to keep the blooms coming. He recommended choosing three different species for overlapping blooms in Brooklyn, beginning in late April with S. x hyacinthflora and S. oblata cultivars, moving into the traditional two to three weeks of S. vulgaris, S. meyeri and S. pubescens and finishing with the late blooming S. x prestoniae, S. patula and S. tomentella in early June. With luck, lilac season can stretch to almost two months, ending with the tree lilacs, S. reticulata cultivars, Ivory Silk and, even later, China Snow or Beijing Gold. Some lilacs, like the pink syringa x Tribida Josée may even rebloom a couple of times over the summer.

The perfume varies with the species. Cultivars of vulgaris and hyacinthflora (hybrids of vulgaris and oblata species) have the familiar, powerfully sweet lilac scent. S. meyeri and S. pubescens cultivars and most late bloomers are spicy, like Rhone wine. The Japanese tree lilac, S. reticulata, has a scent that Mr. Anderson describes as similar to privet. (Some people find it unpleasant.) White Flower Farm corrected that problem by grafting the wonderfully fragrant Palibin onto the straight trunk of the tree lilac. The resulting standard has the beauty of a small tree and a perfume that will make you swoon.

And if you already have a stand of old lilacs, don't despair. Julieanne Frascinella, who oversees 300 lilacs in the Old Westbury Gardens on Long Island, keeps her lilacs within bounds by removing a third of the branches that are thicker than 1 1/2 inches every five years. That way, she said, her shrubs stay around six feet tall.

The most difficult thing about lilacs is choosing one. Once planted into a compost rich soil, slightly acidic to alkaline, in full sun, with good drainage and air circulation, that lilac will outlive you by a couple of hundred years.

Photos: Lilacs attract with their many colors as seen with Syringa Little Boy Blue, left; Syringa pekinensis Beijing, above; and Syringa Tinkerbell. (Photographs by Klehm's Song Sparrow Perennial Farm)